After seven years on the market, all the best gaming RAM is unsurprisingly based on DDR4 until DDR5 memory arrives later this year alongside Intel’s new Alder Lake CPUs. We could see the new standard adopted faster than previous generations, however, as researchers from Yole Développement predict DDR5 will outpace DDR4 sales as soon as 2023.
While DDR4 will continue to make up most DRAM purchases this year, researchers still expect DDR5 RAM to register a single-digit market share before December. Next year, DDR5 is predicted to account for just over 25% of sales, before making up the majority of sales in 2023. By 2025, DDR4 might constitute less than 25% of DRAM sales.
It’s not surprising that researchers predict such a rapid uptake, as there are plenty of reasons to get excited about DDR5. The new standard will be able to handle up to 128GB per DIMM stick in comparison to DDR4’s 32GB limit, and is capable of hitting frequencies of up to 8,400MHz.
The speed of adoption will also depend on how soon AMD releases its Zen 4 chips with DDR5 support, which are currently expected to arrive in late 2022. Until then, only Intel’s future 12th generation processors will support the standard.